


Real Catch, Isn't He?

by BlueTigerTime



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: F/M, Innuendo, Magic, Selkies, also feel free to suggest more possible innuendos thanks, witch of time magics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6218041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueTigerTime/pseuds/BlueTigerTime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damara's just a witch trying to have a good time out on the ocean blue, illegally catching some fish on a boat that may or may not be hers. She didn't sign up for selkies, or injured swimmers, or skeevy greasers. She definitely didn't sign up for all of the above all thrown together into one guy.<br/>(Cronus sure isn't complaining, though.)<br/>(And really? Neither is she.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real Catch, Isn't He?

**Author's Note:**

> Selkie!Cronus and TimeWitch!Damara AU, where Damara can do some things and Cronus is bad at not crashing into boats head-first and then there's some smooching.
> 
> Enjoy!

Being on the ocean isn’t much fun, really. It smells nice, sure, but the rocking motions and the way you’re stuck out here, surrounded by miles of liquid death, tends to dampen the mood a little. Real shame, too; you’d heard lovely things about the kinda money this would get you. You can even do it while high. What is there to hate? All you have to do is bullshit your way out here, into the water, throw down a net, and go. The chair you had that Ampora human boy bolt down right in front of the wheel is slippery, but you’ve got it. Leaning back and kicking your feet up so they’re balanced (maybe a little precariously, to be fair) in the holes of the ship’s helm. It’s weird to feel the wood against your bare skin; it’s a little scratchy, and wet as fuck (hah, just like Cronus when you promised him a reward if he helped you. All you did was give him a kiss on the cheek and salmon in the hand, and the way he turned bright violet, flustered and angry and frustrated... your giggles had reverberated around the empty husks of boats). That’s alright, though.

You twist your mouth and put a hand over your eyes to shield yourself from the sun. Well, even if you didn’t get anything, at least you’d be able to say you’d broken yet another law. One more crime under your belt, amongst other things. It’s easy. Just lie back, and let that damned net just. Catch shit. You guess. You weren’t really paying attention to the explanation. Oh well. Too late now. But this better be fucking worth it, or you swear.

You scratch your arm, nails scoring a few lines of light red amongst the gray of your skin. The salt is weird in the air. It’s almost as if you can feel it settling against you, coating you. Your telekinesis can feel the grains. Cronus didn’t warn you about this. He’s lucky he’s cute, damn it. Well. Cute is one of the ways you’d describe that boy, you guess. There are other parts of him more worth describing, though. Or you would, if he’d bother taking you up all the times you’ve propositioned him. Real shame. You reach into your pocket idly, come up empty, curse into the humid air.

First, you had to go out of your way to find Cronus and then convince him to do things. Usually, Cronus is tolerable, but today he was especially leery, and you don’t need any of that shit. Second, you almost threw yourself overboard just trying to untangle the net from getting stuck on some rudder or some handle or stick or whatever the fuck the terminology was. Now! Now you’re just. Out of any joints. All of them. Gone. Send help.

Whatever. You make a disgusted noise and pull a foot out of the ship’s wheel to rest it on the top. The wheel spins, and only your LIGHTNING FAST reflexes save you. Also, you stop the wheel with telekinesis, but your boss-ass reflexes are definitely real. That’s enough of that, you think, standing up properly and patting down your skirt smooth. Striding over to the railing, you brace your hands tightly on it, grip white-knuckle tight, and lean over to squint into the frothing water. The net’s underneath the boat, to be fair, but you should be able to see… squirming from here, right? The water laps against the boat and nearly splashes you. You rear back, some hair falling out of your bun and whipping you in the face. Goddamn it. This is one of your favorite corsets too.

“Enough of this.” You hiss. With a second of focus (you practice), the net comes around the side of the boat and is dumped onto it, a couple thumps accompanying glistening in flashes of rainbow oil slick. Attaching that particular spell to attract the big ones had taken a while to get to work, especially with all the little twists and knots you had to work around, had been a pain in your shiri. You didn’t even get a chance to test it, but hey, at least it’s still intact. That means it didn’t give out without you noticing; this is a first, and a pattern you hope continues, even when you fucked up the ship. At least, that wheel clusterfuck just now should have done something, but it didn’t- Wait. Hold on.

“What. The fuck.” You say, slowly, at the wriggling mass in the center of the trawling net. You pull the net open with a burst of telekinesis, lifting your foot before an anchovy can slither it’s way into your shoe (or worse, up your nylons; you are not here for slime up there for right now thanks maybe later?). The.. whatever… writhes more, still tangled in the black rope and obscured by your own spells. You squint, look down as you carefully maneuver your way towards the quiet noises, poking it somewhere near the center. It struggles weakly, tries to roll away only to get more entangled, then goes still. Fucking finally. Raising a well-manicured eyebrow, you take a deep breath and exhale slowly, watching the flashes of light and color recede slow, as if pulled away by your own hands. Leaning over, you ensnare your fingers in the rope and tug.

And then, the ropes come apart, and you curse out loud when the body falls away limply. The first thing you see is the shock of black hair against the white paint, wondering if you’d… Wait. Shit. Click-clacking over there, you kneel, knees sliding a little on the water and nearly sending you face-first into tanned… skin… A hand slides into the hair, fingers twitching when you hope for polyester but feel silky locks instead. Fuck you. “I cannot believe thIS.”

Your voice catches on a scream when the fucker rolls towards you, more by the rocking of the boat than anything but damned if you didn’t almost put a goddamn bolt through him. Him. Hold on. You lean over him, scowling when the water soaks your nylons even more thoroughly, but you get your arms underneath the other’s shoulders and pick him up, half-hauling him into your lap. Cronus’ head lolls onto your shoulder, and now that he’s that much closer you can see trickles of red starting to flow down his forehead. You stare at the two lines carved into the corner of his forehead oozing red and try to think of a way to fix this. Well. You’ve got a couch downstairs, you guess, and maybe you do need a little alone time to figure out how the FUCK this idiot was far enough underwater to get caught in your net. You’ve been out here forever, and you didn’t see another ship anywhere. You saw _something_ when he got pulled over but…

Okay, he’s making noises now, alright. Something needs to get done about this. That something is you slinging his arm around your neck and sliding your hand over his back to his side. Part of you takes a second to admire how warm his skin is, and how that tan looks on him. He looks really nice without a shirt. How didn’t you notice this before? Anyway. Once you get him up, you flinch and nearly drop him when your fingers slide against something slimy on his sides. He moans in agony, probably, but you can’t resist entertaining a thought of what he’d sound like…

The fuck? You lean him away, stare at the slits on his sides that are already starting to sink back into his skin and, fuck you, Cronus Ampora is a shifter of some kind and you never even noticed. He’s good at hiding it, though. There’s never been so much as a whiff of anything around him, but it’s not like sensing others was ever your strong point anyway. As you drag him over to the stairs below deck, looking down at your heels and then at him, you take a second to think. The gills under your fingers- that’s what you assume those are, anyway- recede a little more. The sun slides over your skin, warming you and him. You let him rest against your side, enjoying this. He’s very nice when he’s quiet, but you need to check if his head is still in one piece. Soon. Once you get down the stairs. At some point.

Now. You tighten your grip around his ribs, letting your hand slide to his waist, and reach your other down to slip your heels off. It’s precarious, how he’s leaning on you as dead weight and you’re using that as a counterweight to keep you up, and there’s a few times when you have to go rigid, accidentally digging your fingernails into his skin in a panic to stay upright. Fifty boonies bets you look like some sort of fucked-up flamingo. Fantastic. You settle, though, and soon you’re barefoot on the boat, curling your toes and trying not to scowl at the feel of dirt. You fail. Not that you were trying real hard.

After that ordeal, you slide your hands onto the banister and begin the dangerous trek into the belly of the comfortable beast. Before, you guess you weren’t really worried, but he’s really limp. Alarmingly limp. Your medical expertise isn’t killer, exactly, since you mostly meddle with time majyyks rather than healing ones. Brows furrowing, you shuffle over to the couch in the place and slide him onto it, kinda falling on him a little but that just makes you end up half-kneeling with an arm over his stomach, flinching and cursing loud in a language you know he doesn’t know, not that it matters, but fuck. He shifts.

You stand up, turn around to look up the stairs where the ocean is still blowing beautiful breezes and the sun’s warming up the deck. Damn. Nice day too. Well, the sea is sorta starting to feel like a prison on all sides, so it’s no skin off your nethers when you turn and decide to attend to your apparent shapeshifting boy-toy. You look at him closer now, notice how he’s crossed his legs subconsciously. Okay, you haven’t read much, but when you and Rufioh still got together to read up on the popular, teen folklore of the day, you remember swooning over the idea of mercreatures that could shift easily... Especially the kind that turned with some dumb problem, like touching water. But you remember plenty times when he’d dumped water and other drinks on himself whenever you got handsy, though. Surely.

Well, maybe you can ask him in a little bit. Smoothing a hand thoughtfully over his chest, you glance around. The first-aid kit winks at you upon the table you left it on with the nearby portwindow open. Wow, that was stupid. His chest rises and falls, slow and smooth under your palm. “I’m magic, you know. I know some tricks,” you say idly to the empty air, mostly because you’re certain that keeping your hands _here_ instead of taking them off to go over there is best. You know what you’re doing. Even if you didn’t, well.

Well, there goes that doubt about medical issues, goddamn it. Fucking… Fine, you’ll go get the goddamn first-aid kit. As you do that, grumbling to yourself about ruined clothes and nothing to even show for it, just a fucked-up dude on your couch and a little bit of a headache, there are noises of a guy wearing some… weird, furry shorts… waking up and shuffling around. You get back over there in a hurry, grunting angrily at how the nylons shift wetly against your skin. That’s gross. You should take those off, but in a second. With a murmur of old tongues, your nylons decide to back up in time just far enough to be dry, and as you mumble, you press the other hand (still a little cold, to be fair) to his chest and keep him down when he tries to sit up. A concerned noise slips past your lips despite yourself; the first-aid kit is placed on the floor. His eyelids flutter so you stand, busying yourself on drying your hands with majyyks and then grabbing the kit to open that so you look busy instead of what you’re doing, which is admiring. All the planes. And angles. Of. Him. Okay. He looks really damn nice, look at him. The wild urge to touch him again sends a tingle from your head to your toes.

He makes a remarkably animal noise, snapping you out of your reverie. You glance at him, open the kit properly and place it on his stomach because that’s not really being used right now anyway. “Welcome back,” you say, tapping him on the shoulder to get him to sit up. He stares at you, wide-eyed but unfocused. Tap-tap-tap. His shoulder jerks away from you and it’s all you can do not to roll your eyes at him. You bring your hands up to try to bandage his head anyway, even if he’s not going to cooperate.

He hisses, leans away from your touch and bares his teeth as if to bite. Pointedly, you bare yours too. What’s he think he is? Some sorta tough guy? “Fuck off, Ampora. Let me fix you stupid injuries.” You lose a little of the English there, but oh well. He blinks again, makes this high-pitched noise that you’re sure is remnants of whatever he’d just shifted out of. Ha. You’re never gonna let this go.

Anyway. You shush him when he tries to get aggressive again, and just get busy bandaging him up, wrapping the gauze around his head. “Jesus, Ampora. Look at mess,” you say when he tries to whine at you when you pull too tight, “you are going to make it worse if you move.”

Look at that. He stops moving. When you finally finish up, fingers prodding at the edges to make sure it’s all going to stay, he watches you with wide eyes. You snap your fingers in front of his face to pull him out of the trance, rolling your eyes when he makes a face at you out of spite.

“Hey, you started it,” you scold, putting a hand on his face to straighten him up when his gaze wanders a bit. Not that you’d be loathe if he chose to look elsewhere, but right now you need to see how his head’s holding up. His skull is probably thick enough to have taken most of the damage, but there’s no harm in just making sure. There’s _definitely_ no harm in leaving your hand here, though, over sun-kissed skin. You kind of want to make it _you_ -kissed skin. 

He squirms against your touch, face twisted up into an unflattering scowl before you smoothly, slowly, rub a thumb over his cheekbone, watching his brow unfurrow under your touch. A smile creeps up on your face before you can stop it- not that you wanna, or anything- and makes you want to lean in towards him. You don’t. Instead, you watch his eyes flutter open, the blue blue _blue_ of his eyes meeting your maroon ones. Look at that. He’s got pretty eyes.

“Thanks,” he whispers to you, eyes still glazed over but a little clearer, a little more focused, “yours are prettier. ‘M a selkie. I wvasn’t checkin’ how close ya boat wvas. I’m gonna.”

He stops, abruptly. You jerk back a little because you said it out loud but lean back in, eyebrows raising in the silent question for him to finish. Letting up doesn’t seem right, so you keep running your thumb over his skin as he struggles to find the words, mouth half-open. It’s so hard to keep your eyes from crawling down to see that you don’t actually bother. It’s so gratifying to let it happen, see him inhale shakily and lean into your hand. His lips look soft, bitten (out of nervousness, probably). “A selkie? I haven’t- really? Your skin, then?” You say without a single change in your voice, smiling wider and cradling his face. A flicker of your eyes confirms that the wound’s stopped bleeding and the gauze isn’t too alarmingly red. He splutters, takes a breath through his mouth which REALLY makes you want to kiss him and see the look on his face but first, curiosity. You’re on a boat miles from the shore and he’s right here and he’s not going anywhere. Neither are you.

He gestures to his… crotch, and you laugh without meaning to do it. He blushes hot enough for you to feel through your palm. “No! I mean…” Again, he gestures, touches the fabric wrapped around his waist. Ah, that makes sense. “I only turn wvhen I’m all wvet.”

That makes you giggle, winking at him as he turns red enough that you pap his cheek, just to make sure he’s not going to pass out on you or anything. He smiles shyly, still bright red. You have pity on him and pull away to give him a second to calm down, other hand brushing the fur around his waist. The noise of quiet disappointment is worth it just to see him turn redder when he realizes you heard it. That’s his punishment for trying to follow you, or something, when he first told you about this ship. He couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could he?

You look at him, squinting once he meets your eyes. Oh, well. That can wait. You should reward him for holding still when you were bandaging him up. Half-closing your eyes, you place your hands over his, loosely fisting his sealskin. After sliding your fingers in between the spaces of his so his grip is entirely loosened, you just smile when he makes a noise around the lines of ‘huh?’. Grabbing hold of his hand, you pull him forward to kiss him hard, swallowing his squeak in your mouth when his lips collide with yours. They’re just as soft as they look, and he tastes of salt water and faintly of something bitter; probably tobacco. He shivers against you then relaxes, leaning forward even more. Perfect. You pull away, breathing a little hard but definitely still just fine, unlike Cronus, who makes a needy little noise and tries to pull you back in before he just huffs. That’s adorable. You might keep him around for a little while.

You let go of his hands (much to his chagrin) and peck him on the bridge of his nose to placate him. “Well, come here.”

“Wvh-”

“Now you have to fix your mess. And tell me why the fuck I can’t catch anything.”

“But-”

You grab his wrists and tug him up, even as he protests weakly. He doesn’t pull away when you lead him back upstairs, and he doesn’t even say anything when you make him help you throw the net back overboard. You could have done it with your telekinesis, but watching the muscles in his arms shift is an alright substitute. Now that you think about it...

To be fair, you do want him to do all those things. But you also want an excuse to put your hands over him again- mostly by guiding him places and making sure he’s fine and not dizzy, even when he obviously is but you’re just being sure- and kiss him, and the more noises he makes (such as explaining things to you, or complaining when you hand him a broom), the more excuse you have to shut him up.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:
> 
> Imagine Person A of your OTP illegally fishing using a trawl net, which catches Person B, someone just diving in the middle of the ocean. Person B, unconscious and injured (have you seen what they catch?), lands on Person A’s boat. How do they react?
> 
> (I'm going to be real, this is really self-indulgent CroMara but this is my life and I do what I want and if I want kinda mermaid-y cromara I'm gonna write kinda mermaid-y cromara)


End file.
